Significance Of Love Research Articles

The significance of love in relation to looked-after children and child sexual exploitation

Drawing on the knowledge that looked-after children are disproportionately involved in child sexual exploitation, this critical systematic literature review considers the significance of ‘love’, using bell hooks’ ‘love ethic’. This literature review applies a systematic approach to retrieving literature and includes ten peer-reviewed journal articles containing primary research from individuals with lived experience of being a looked-after child and child sexual exploitation, or professionals within the field. Thematic analysis is used to identify the themes of risk, agency and relational practice. Together, these explore how dominant discourses of neoliberalism, patriarchy and capitalism shape modern social work, increase the risk of child sexual exploitation for looked-after children and maintain conditions needed for child sexual exploitation to function. bell hooks’ conceptualisation of the ‘love ethic’ is discussed as a possible framework in meeting the unmet emotional and economic needs of looked-after children through using ‘love as action’. ‘Love’, critical thinking and critical reflection are then recommended for social work.

"Fatigue" as a Condition of Indifference of Love: Conclusions of Postmodernism

Relevance. The article examines the indifference to the experience of love. In the postmodern era, staying in the subject is regarded as an inability to independently fill oneself with important resources for life: first of all, it is important to realize oneself, anesthesia is offered by self – sufficiency against love pain, "everything will still have time, love will not run away anywhere." There is a devaluation of love, it acquires a consumer character and is supported by diagnoses as "addiction", which formulates a conclusion about its devaluation. This assumption implies the emergence of "love fatigue" as an expression of a lack or lack of attention to the basic value of a person.The purpose of the work is to study the causes of "love fatigue" in the context of postmodernity.Objectives: to determine the causes of "fatigue" in the manifestation of love; to characterize the phenomenon of "love" in postmodern society; to assess the impact of consumer culture on the value and significance of love and partner.Methodology. The methodological basis of the article is the method of system analysis, which made it possible to discover modern attitudes to human relationships, in particular love, and the theoretical and methodological basis is the research of domestic and foreign philosophers and sociologists studying the problem of feelings in the postmodern era.Results. In this paper, the concepts of "fatigue" and "love" are considered. Revealed a difference in attitude to the feeling of love in (post)modern society.Conclusions. Existing norms allow a person to experience life experience, change its form and content, which means that the understanding of feelings and the value of relationships become unattainable for another – the boundaries become invisible. However, if a person develops the will to comprehend the other and accept him as he is, then he will free love from human limits, and therefore will enjoy time next to and development with him.

The Image of the Sea in Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis’s and Vydūnas’s Artistic Program of the Creation of the World

The article illustrates the creative connections between the composer and painter Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911) and the playwright and philosopher Vydūnas (Vilhelmas Storostas, 1868-1953) observed and described by their contemporaries and later, by scholars in a very general way. The article discusses the following elements of Čiurlionis’s and Vydūnas’s creative program: a work of art as a vision, the creative act as the creation of one’s own world, the principle of combining abstract and specific, and the positivity of worldview expressed in the direction of ascent. The image of the sea, which has become the main object of the work, expresses the creative world. In the interpretations of the legend about Jūratė and Kastytis, the significance of love between the human and the goddess alters from human humility and mutual feeling of love to the meanings of co-creation revealed by Čiurlionis and Vydūnas, depicting the reaction of the gods to the love of the goddess and man—from the punishment to blessing (Vydūnas’s Jūraitė). Interpretations of the legend vary from the “bound” Prometheus—the image of Kastytis bound to a rock to the meanings of the liberated Prometheus (looking at the corpus of Čiurlionis’s works, the painting “Rex,” the finale of Vydūnas’s Jūrų varpai and Jūraitė assert the liberation of the human-creator). Both artists affirm the strengthening of the inner powers of the individual. They consolidate the unmatched value of the power of human creativity.

Irish Nationalism in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats

W.B. Yeats was born in 1865 near Dublin in Ireland and through his literary work contributed in the cultural nationalism of Ireland. He had visions of a future Ireland that would eventually become the modern Ireland we know and love today. He attempted to bring the country together by replacing sectarian and class allegiances with a nationalistic one. When it came to nationalism, he tried to explain the significance of love and death. In this paper, I will try to discuss Irish nationalism in the poetry of Yeats.

Love in the Shadow of Oblivion: The Meaning Given to Love in Couples Living With Alzheimer’s Disease, From a Family View

Aims and objectives: To deeply understand the significance of love between spouses who live with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) in a familial aspect. Background: While there is extensive empirical knowledge on the subject of AD, as well as about love, little is known about love in old age, and even less is known about love between spouses who live with AD. This study is a pioneering study that describes love and relationship with AD. Design: A phenomenological qualitative research, which enables a close examination of the experience that accompanies the couple and their adult children from a family perspective that has not yet been examined. It belongs to the stream of Social Constructivism whereby the purpose of interviewing more than one family member was used to capture the process by which family members construct their identity as individuals and as a family unit. Methods: Forty-five in-depth interviews were conducted with n = 15 triads including the couple and their adult child, based on Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Results: Three central themes emerged: (1) The meaning of AD, (2) Continuity and discontinuity of love prior and with AD, (3) The meaning of love in coupled living with AD. Conclusions: Commitment with AD is a moral-ethical obligation, and not necessarily because of love, due to the increasing price of separation. Future research is discussed. Key words: Alzheimer’s disease, Love, Relationship, Meaning, couples

Helder Macedo: O ensaio como gesto amoroso

Este artigo pretende analisar possíveis pontos de interseção semânticos e estruturais entre o género epistolar e o género ensaístico na obra crítica de Helder Macedo. Tomarei como objeto de estudo Camões e outros contemporâneos (2017), sua mais nova coletânea de textos críticos revisitados, a qual inclui quatro ensaios sobre Luís de Camões. Entre eles destaca-se “Camões: o imaginário da malandragem”, em que o ensaísta se debruça sobre cartas cuja autoria é atribuída ao poeta. Para refletir sobre a importância do amor na obra de Helder Macedo – como tema, força motriz e modus operandi –, será fundamental o estudo de semiótica Presenças do outro (2002), de Eric Landowski, no qual há um capítulo dedicado especificamente às cartas de amor, entendidas como um meio pelo qual se procura tornar presente o outro ausente, ou seja, como ato de presentificação do outro.

Theme of Love and Suffering of Women in Rabindranath Tagore’s Novel ‘A Grain of Sand’ (Chokher Bali, 1903)

The novel, ‘A Grain of Sand’ (Chokher Bali,1903), is about the social problems of early marriages, widowhood, and extra-marital affair of a married man with a young widow. In this novel, Rabindranath Tagore has portrayed the problems of women in Indian society like widow-remarriage, child-marriage, dowry and illicit extra-marital relationship along with the predicaments of widows in Bengal at the end of the nineteenth century. The difficulties and complications of human relationships and the significance of love in the human relationships are portrayed in this novel. He has encouraged the need of female education and the abolition of social evils like child-marriage, dowry, widowhood and illiteracy of women, domestic hostility and submissiveness of women are presented in his wonderful novels and stories. In the centre of these social obstacles, female education is revealed as a greater need in the Tagore’s novels. He has portrayed the solitude, sufferings, disappointments and unfulfilled suppressed desires of sexuality of a Bengali widow Binodini in this novel ‘A Grain of Sand’. Rabindranath Tagore had seen social realities from a psychological point of view and performed the role of a social reformer or a moralist. He has presented the problems of women by examining what is happening in the society. In this novel Tagore has shown an amazing notice of the predicaments of women of the Hindu society. In this study an investigation has been made to show how Rabindranath Tagore has depicted the theme of love and suffering of women in this novel ‘A Grain of Sand’.

Loving Kindness and Mercy: their Human and Cosmic Significance

AbstractThis paper starts by examining the language used in some well known scriptural passages where the importance of mercy or compassion is stressed. Such passages underline the ethical importance of a direct, physically and emotionally involved response. This leads on to a critique of the shortcomings of approaches to ethics which advocate the impersonal promotion of welfare; our lives as ethical beings depend intimately on the immediate responses arising from our encounters with others in our day-to-day lives. The paper then further explores the special status of loving kindness and mercy in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, and argues that secular ethical systems, whether grounded in human nature or in the supposed requirements of rationality, are unlikely to be able to underwrite this kind of status. The final section reflects further on the ‘cosmic’ significance of love in a theistic worldview.

DISHONESTY AND THE COST OF PLAYING WITH OTHERS FEELINGS IN ANTHONY TROLLOPE S THE WAY WE LIVE NOW

The Victorian Period, beginning in 1837 and ending in 1901, is a period when British Imperial develops and expands with an unprecedented speed. This period brings England- the first industrialized country in the world- to the highest level of develeopment. During this period, rural based life styles change into urban based economy and modern life which results in increase in wealth. Cities experience rapid growth, life styles of people differentiate, the landscape changes and massive production replaces agricultural production. Despite the prosperity and optimism in this period, some difficulties associated with the rapid industrialization emerge. Unemployment, poverty and competitive desire for social security appear causing restlessness among the members of the British society. The authors of this period from Charles Dickens to Elizabeth Gaskel and Anthony Trollope handle the issues of Victorian period and keep a critical eye on the matters changing the structure of the community. The aim of his study is to reflect the effects of rapid industrialization through Anthony Trollope’s view. In his novel titled The Way We Live Now he presents the introduction of materaliasm characterized by a ‘’great financier’’ and the leakage ofdishonesty- as the financial power- into economical, religious, social and political institutes of British Community is analyzed. This study, displays the excessive interest of both the institutes and individuals to dishonesty at the same time proves that financial benefits result in frustration. Additionally, the presentation of the cost of playing with others’ feelings and the significance of love and moral values are handled.

Divine love in the letter to the Romans

This article investigates divine love in the letter to the Romans from the perspective of love as a key motif in spirituality and in light of spiritual hermeneutics. After a short introduction about the significance of love as a spiritual motif, the article motivates why the notion of divine love is important for understanding the letter to Romans. It challenges existing interpretations of love in contemporary research on Romans that associates it mostly with the relationship between people, neglecting the significant passages in Romans in which love is first and foremost associated with the character and actions of God. In the rest of the article four essential characteristics of divine love is investigated, with attention to its originary, intimate, powerful and self-giving nature.1

A Christian understanding of the significance of love of oneself in loving God and neighbour: Towards an integrated self-love reading

This article addresses the meaning of the great commandment of love (Mt. 22:35–40) with afocus on the understanding of self-love as considered within a Christian context. Christians ingeneral understand the commandment as applying to love of God and one’s neighbour. Thereference to self-love tends to be ignored or misunderstood, especially when love of self isviewed in the context of the Christian virtues of humility and self-mortification. The conceptof narcissism (self-preoccupation or self-glorification) has devastating effects on relationshipswith God, human beings and the world. In the Christian context self-love is not a thirdcommandment and it is not clearly outlined in Scripture. Furthermore, the love of oneselfseems to be the norm by which the love of God and neighbour are measured. It appearstherefore that by bringing narcissism into the equation of self-love, a better understanding canbe achieved of what a healthy Christian self-love should entail. Furthermore, a brief discussionon the views of the self as mind, emotions and will as well as agape, philia and eros is requiredfor a proposed integrated self-love reading.

Transformation in love in Paul’s letter to the Galatians

Paul’s Letter to the Galatians is known as a bitter defence of his “true” gospel of faith against opponents who wish to impose their “false” gospel of works on the faith community. This focus on the faith-works controversy has not been conducive to attempts to read it in terms of the notion of love. This article seeks to reconsider this position and to spell out the special role of love in the letter and its transformative nature. In a first section, the approach to the theme is explained. After a discussion of the polemical nature of the letter, the article analyses Paul’s presentation of divine love in the letter as the origin of God’s salvific and transformative action and of love as a divine characteristic, and how divine love marks the identity of the believing community. The significance of love in the ethos and ethics of the faith community is spelled out.

Personifications of Eudaimonia, Felicitas and Fortuna in Greek and Roman Art

When Eudaimonia appears as a personification in Classical Greek vase painting, she is closely connected to Aphrodite and Eros. The Latin beatitudo has no personification in the arts, but the iconographic qualities of Eudaimonia are cited in variants of the Roman Felicitas and her alter ego, Fortuna, who were believed to govern a more pragmatic kind of love in which fertility was regarded as one road to happiness, but there were also other paths, such as health and safe homecoming from the sea. This paper addresses Eudaimonia, Felicitas and Fortuna in a diachronic perspective on Greek and Roman art and directs the attention to the use of these personifications/goddesses as visual expressions of the significance of love and reproduction in a good life. The individual, sexual love where pleasure creates a sensation of ‘bliss’ is compared to the religious/spiritual beliefs in a happy afterlife as well as to public expressions of a shared and lasting love where the goal – fertility and reproduction – embodied welfare and happiness.

Prescribing love for the heart? Stress reduction and medical effects of altruism, compassion and love

Objective Talking points on the therapeutic significance of love offered by neurobiology and positive psychology. Discussion Love is difficult to define. Looked at neurobiologically, it is closely associated with the concept of pleasure, reward and ‘positive psychology’, i.e., joyful mental states, and therefore has become a feature not only of psychological but also of basic science research and clinical medicine. Though not identical, altruism and compassion show physiological commonalities with the neurobiology of love. This understanding utilizes limbic ‘neural emotionality’, using as substrates, among others, endogenous morphine, dopamine and nitric oxide signaling. Particularly in love responses, oxytocin and vasoppressin additionally fit in. Love in the beginning can be stressful. This is also true of other stress-reducing practices that incorporate a stress component initially, i.e., relaxation and placebo responses. This initial uprise is termed anticipatory stress response (ASR). The initial activation of this stress component of the total response – i.e., relaxation and/or love response – is significant and represents a protective mechanism. Activation is started, then followed by relaxation, i.e., stress release, only if the situation allows for it, guaranteeing an appropriate environment. Stress and love therefore act as biological counterplayers. This function of love is of particular importance for the cardiovascular system and is expressed via stress response pathways and their subsequent down-regulation. Thus, emotional (i.e., non-cognitive) processes became adducts to stress activation, terminating it quickly. Altruistic and compassionate behaviors exactly fulfil this need and thus show stress-reducing capacities. Physiological alterations following such behaviors can be profound and lasting, as demonstrated for the autonomous and the central nervous or the cardiovascular systems. This potential has led to a broad array of studies demonstrating positive medical effects of love, social bonding, volunteering and compassion, especially of benefit for the heart and the brain, implying that this self-healing potential could be used in various therapeutic situations, including integrative medicine. Conclusions Love facilitates health and stress reduction. This effect can be observed clinically and biologically. Thus, love and companionship not only ensure the survival of individuals and their species, but also support beneficial motivation and health behaviors.

Palomar and Beyond: An Interview with Gilbert Hernandez

Perhaps no one has done more to energize the field of alternative comics--graphic narrative and cartoons that do not follow a superhero or traditional genre formula--than Gilbert Hernandez. In 1981 he, along with his brothers Jaime and Mario, self-published a highly eclectic and off-beat comic book, Love and Rockets, a work that quickly caught the attention of the Seattle-based publisher of comic art, Fantagraphics Books. A year later, the publisher began putting out what was to be the first volume of Love and Rockets in a magazine-sized format, a series that ran until 1996, when Los Bros Hernandez--as the brothers had become known--decided to end the title and pursue their own individual projects. Over its fourteen-year run, Love and Rockets exemplified what alternative comics, and comic books in general, could actually achieve. Their work betrayed an unlikely mix of influences--including the 1970s punk rock movement, South American magic realism, Hollywood filmmaking, and their own southern Californian Chicano experiences--making Beto (as Gilbert Hernandez is known) and Jaime Hernandez heirs to the underground comix scene made famous, and notorious, by such figures as Robert Crumb, Bill Griffith, Gilbert Shelton, and Jack Jackson. The brothers revived the Love and Rockets title in 2001, this time in standard comic book-sized issues, and the series continues to this day. From its self-published debut, Love and Rockets has comprised a variety of ongoing narrative arcs as well as one-shot strips. One of the most significant of these is Gilbert Hernandez's novelistic series of tales that revolve around a mythic Latin American town, Palomar. These narratives have been collected in the monumental Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories (2003), a work that has garnered more than its share of critical praise and a small but growing body of scholarly attention. Hernandez has spent the better part of his career fleshing out the personal histories that populate Palomar, most notably those of Chelo, the town's aggressive female sheriff; Pipo, a striking and confident entrepreneur who creates her own line of clothing and eventually her own media empire; and Heralcio, a school teacher with a flair for philosophy and a passion for Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Franz Kafka. But perhaps Palomar's most prominent resident is Luba, a sexually promiscuous and hard-edged member of the community who constantly wields a hammer (as a symbol of her power) and who eventually becomes the town's mayor. Her stories make up the bulk of Hernandez's work to date, and he has just recently concluded her and her family's adventures after moving to the United States. The world of Luba and her half sisters, Fritz and Petra (which also includes Petra's daughter Venus, and Luba's own daughters, including Maricela, Guadalupe, Doralis, and Casimira) functions as an empowering matriarchy that has been lauded by a variety of critics as revolutionary in the field of comics. Through these female figures, Hernandez gives voice not only to ethnic American concerns, but to women's issues, gender politics, and even gay rights, topics that rarely come to the fore in American graphic narrative. In fall 2006 I talked with Gilbert Hernandez about his work as well as about issues of race and ethnicity within the field of comics. What follows is the result of a phone conversation, along with a series of email-based correspondences in early 2007, in which we discussed his Palomar stories, the significance of Love and Rockets, the influence of popular culture on his writing, and the social function of graphic artists who take on the issues of ethnicity, class, and gender in their work. Derek Parker Royal: You and your brothers were the first writers to give a real voice to the Hispanic community in comics. What do you think, in your view, is the current state of ethnic or racial representation within this medium? Gilbert Hernandez: I see more of it in the mainstream comics. …

Dickens and the Idea of the Comic Novel

The idea of comedy inherited by Dickens and his contemporaries derived from classical, medieval, and Renaissance traditions, in which comedy dealt with 'low-life' subjects and exposed the 'ludicrous' in human actions, but which also allowed for happy endings, rewards for the virtuous, punishments for 'bad' characters, and, following the Shakespearian model, the celebration of human love. This essay argues that although Dickens was sometimes dismissed as a humorist by Victorian critics, his work should be seen in the mainstream of the English tradition of comic fiction. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are explored in the light of these arguments. ********** In the preface to his edition of Shakespeare of 1765 Samuel Johnson complained that Shakespeare's first editors, Heming and Condell, seemed not to have distinguished between the genres of comedy, history, and tragedy 'by any exact or definite ideas'. Johnson went on to describe what he saw as the vague notion of comedy which was acceptable to Jacobean audiences: 'An action which ended happily to the principal persons, however serious or distressful through its intermediate incidents, constituted a comedy.' (1) Largely thanks to the example and the subsequent influence of Shakespeare's comedies over the span of English literature this loose definition has taken on some intellectual weight. Indeed, if we balance it with the splendidly bland theory of fiction expressed by Miss Prism in the second act of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, it can be seen as having shaped a good number of moral, but not necessarily exclusively 'comic', novels. For Prism, fiction simply 'means' that 'the good ended happily, and the bad unhappily' (though Cecily Cardew nicely protests that the theory 'seems very unfair'). (2) If we were to superadd Shakespeare's concern with the significance of love and marriage to what Johnson describes as Heming and Condell's idea of 'comedy', we might safely arrive at a very loose definition of what is often called 'romantic comedy'. This 'romantic comedy' is, of course, at odds with the 'classical' idea of what constituted the comic. For Plato the comic spirit was rooted in the representation of self-ignorance. In the Philebus he has Socrates argue that 'those [...] who combine their delusion with weakness and incapacity to be revenged on a scoffer you may truly call comic figures [...] In the strong, ignorance of self is odious and repulsive [...]. Where it is weak, we see the proper place and true character of the comic.' (3) This notion is echoed by Aristotle, with a new stress on social status, in his definition of the 'ludicrous': Comedy is [...] an imitation of characters of a lower type--not, however, in the full sense of the word, bad; for the Ludicrous is merely a subdivision of the ugly. It may be defined as a defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive. Thus, for example, the comic mask is ugly and distorted, but does not cause pain. (4) Despite our lack of Aristotle's larger treatise on comedy, it has been assumed that these Greek principles came to influence Roman comedy and, beyond the ancient world, the comic dramas and stories of medieval and Renaissance Europe. The medieval comic tale seems to have retained many of the elements outlined by Aristotle. Commenting generally on the traditions of comic storytelling, and on audience responses to comedy, which held sway until the late eighteenth century, Derek Brewer has written: No general study of humour was made in the Middle Ages. It is an interesting question whether such a quality, or entity, was even recognised. There was some discussion of comedy and tragedy, usually of a learned and rather muddled kind, based on an inadequate study of classical sources. Discussions of comedy rarely do more than imply humour [...] the kind of funniness enjoyed in the Renaissance was very similar to the traditional and medieval forms. …

Biblical Challenges to a Theology of Love

AbstractA contemporary systematic theological reflection upon love requires a cross-disciplinary attention to the plurality of approaches to love within the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. This article explores the retrieval and development of Jewish love traditions within three New Testament traditions, namely the Synoptic Gospels, the Johannine texts, and Paul. These approaches agree on the divine origin and gift-character of love, but differ in their assessment of both the horizon of love and the significance of love for the Christian community. John stresses the community's need to be united in love against a hostile environment; Paul recommends the praxis of love as means of dealing with difference, otherness and conflict within the community; and Luke considers the universal scope of neighbourly love. Thus, acknowledging God as the author of love and reflecting upon God's nature as love does not necessarily lead to the same theological convictions or praxis of love in church and world. Moreover, the rich and ambiguous history of biblical love includes a shifting emphasis on human desire, the erotic, and the body. A critical theology of love would need to pay close attention to both the possibilities and ambiguities of the plurality of approaches to love in the Bible.

Natality and the Philosophy of Two

The recent work of Luce Irigaray is indisputably Utopian for its elaboration of a possible becoming founded in a love that thwarts all conflict. From the publication of I Love to You in 1992 (1996), the question of love has been prominent in her writing-we find it in To be Two (2000a) and in Democracy Begins Between Two (2000b). Indeed, the title of her latest publication, The Way of Love, is indicative of her current thinking.1 But this is not a new departure as such; the significance of love as self-love and as love of the other was elaborated in An Ethics of Sexual Difference (1993). It was around the time of the publication of that text, however, that Irigaray started to stress the importance of the woman-man relation in her work. Love and a philosophy of these two sexed beings as the "two" began to take precedence as key elements in a transformation to a new era. The compulsion to progress to another culture permeates Irigaray's writing: she argues in various ways that recognition of a sexual difference to come will lead us out of our listless impasse and its wildcat violence. At a certain level, this argument may appear unconvincing. The persistence of wars suggests that conflict is indeed endemic to History, or that, for all the theoretical possibility of peace, history suggests that it is only ever partial and momentary. In fact, the contrast between the dire intractability of certain conflicts and some of her claims makes her analysis seem extremely utopian: as if simply loving the other as other will resolve the anguish of historical injustice and the brutality of material want. Any such call to love can only bring to mind the Christian inheritance, and indeed that context is not inappropriate to Irigaray's thought. She has worked with Christian groups in France, and thinkers such as Feuerbach have provided a springboard for key developments in her thought.2 Yet for many this is hardly a favorable association: how can Christian love really address the icy stillness of the dark night sky and the blinding detours of desire without displacing their negativity onto some form of other? The emphasis on love in Irigaray's more recent texts suggests that she believes it can-her current style contrasting with the irreverence and wit of her earlier critiques.3 But Irigaray's relationship to Christianity is of course not that simple. Her method always entails a process of reclaiming and reconstituting ideas while drawing upon different traditions. There is no immediacy of a kingdom of God within, no nihilistic assertion of the existence of an other world beyond the earth. Her utopianism emerges out of the bleakness of her own analysis of patriarchy, and it is from there that she wishes to develop a different horizon within the world. In common with many other political writers, her analyses are not primarily a contemplative reflection on a given state of affairs, or a questioning without end, but an intervention aimed at enhancing a process of change. It is possible to interpret such a desire for change as a manifestation of a love for the world that Hannah Arendt described as the human condition of natality. For in her critique Irigaray presents patriarchy as a total system. Following other feminists' work on the predominance of patriarchy in human history-most notably Simone de Beauvoir's (1954) in the French context-her writings pursue with relentless rigor the exclusive dominion of the masculine. The very worldliness of the world is deemed masculine and determinant for a femininity that nevertheless acts as its indispensable silent support. Regardless of opinion over its historical veracity, the pursuance of the silent feminine in the total world of this masculinity is arguably a potentially self-annihilating task, perhaps akin to the reputed madness of following the path to the Hegelian absolute. Trapped in between the inhuman state of matter and the inhumane condition of being matter-for-men, why wouldn't the impossibility of becoming lead women to cease-to-be rather than come-to-be? …